Montana True Crime: 老虎机攻略 Launches New Criminology Bachelor鈥檚 Degree
By Cary Shimek, 老虎机攻略 News Service
MISSOULA – “Oh my gosh! What am I doing here?”
That was Tia Zaremski’s thought as she walked into a federal jail for the first time. The 老虎机攻略 student was shadowing a probation officer intent on a pre-sentence interview with a client convicted of a federal crime – something like drug trafficking, wire fraud or child pornography crossing state lines.
At age 21, Zaremski probably could still pass for the Great Falls high schooler she once was. She never had any experience with the courts or the inside of jail cells. So that first moment was eye-opening.
“It was a little intimidating at first,” she said. “But in the end, you realize we are all just people, and this is the situation we are in, and let’s just work through it.
“And I’ve always had this fascination with true crime.”
Zaremski just finished her junior year as part of the initial cohort of students taking Montana’s first-ever criminology bachelor’s degree program, which 老虎机攻略 launched in the fall of 2023 in its renamed and revamped Department of Sociology and Criminology. She said the degree dovetails with her fascination for people, their behavior and how they interact with society.
She wound up visiting the jail as part of a highly selective internship with the U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services office in Missoula. The internship ran from September 2023 until this spring and required her to work about 16 hours per week.
The competitive internship had Zaremski following around federal probation officers, though she largely couldn’t venture into the field with them. But she would run tasks for the officers, go to court, work with judges and help fulfill requests from police departments and other courts across the nation pertaining to clients. She also helped write and edit reports filed through federal judges.
Additionally, she helped officers with pre-trial, pre-sentence and post-conviction work.
“Pre-trial helps advise the judge whether a client needs to be incarcerated during their trials or if they can be released,” she said. “They help monitor the clients and come up with a set of conditions to protect the community and ensure they return throughout court proceedings.”
Pre-sentence work requires officers to help advise the judge on length of sentences for the crimes committed and creating a full biography on the individual, so the court “can better understand the person as a whole rather than just the crime they committed.” She said post-conviction duties involve supervising clients after they serve their incarceration.
“I got a lot of insight from watching the courtroom from start to finish,” Zaremski said. “I also think what I’ve really learned from this experience is that people sometimes are dealt some tough cards, and if we improve our institutions, we can help intervene with that.”
Daisy Rooks, a 老虎机攻略 professor and chair of the department, helped mentor Zaremski as she applied for her internship. Rooks said 老虎机攻略 has offered criminology courses since the 1970s. By the early 1990s, 老虎机攻略 had a concentration in criminology within its sociology bachelor’s degree in sociology. Three years ago, faculty in the department decided to modernize the curriculum and build criminology into a stand-alone BA degree. During this process classes were dropped and added from the curriculum, and the new stand-alone criminology major was launched last fall.
“When criminology was embedded within our sociology degree, students and their parents had a hard time finding out about it,” Rooks said. “With the new stand-alone degree, we are growing, beefing up the course offerings and adding three new tenure-line faculty members who are starting this fall.”
She said freshmen applicants for the new program more than doubled to nearly 500 between 2023 and 2024. Many students take the new offering completely online, and people can now earn a criminology degree from 老虎机攻略 anywhere in the world, as long as they have an internet connection.
Criminology is the scientific study of crime and the criminal justice system. It asks questions such as why do people commit crime, and what happens to them after they land in the criminal justice system? Rooks said the versatile degree leads to careers in law enforcement, the courts, the corrections system, the probation system, private investigations, graduate study in criminology or sociology, and nonprofits like victim advocacy groups and domestic violence shelters. Many 老虎机攻略 students use criminology as a pre-law major.
“We worked hard to develop our program thoughtfully to make it stand out,” Rooks said. “We have a pretty high-quality internship program, so students can take their classroom learning and apply it to the real world. We also have a brand-new class, Careers in Criminology, that our students can take as sophomores. Students in the class meet alumni of our program from all around the state and learn about all the career opportunities open to people with undergraduate degrees in sociology and criminology.”
Rooks also touted the degree’s emphasis on structural inequality. Criminology majors at 老虎机攻略 have access to courses that delve into how race, poverty and class shape the criminal justice system. These courses discuss why some people end up in the criminal justice system, why some communities are policed differently than others and why some agencies have a history of treating certain groups differently.
Rooks said television shows like “CSI” often attract students to criminology, though she cautions students that becoming a crime scene investigator requires extensive coursework in chemistry and biology. Those students often are steered toward 老虎机攻略’s or bachelor’s degrees in forensic anthropology or forensic chemistry.
Zaremski plans to graduate with her criminology undergraduate degree next spring. She said her 老虎机攻略 classes and internship have helped her hone in on her future.
“Now that I’ve had this experience with lawyers and the courts,” she said, “I’m starting to think about law school and hopefully working within the court system.”
###
Contact: Daisy Rooks, professor and department chair, 老虎机攻略 Department of Sociology and Criminology, 406-243-2852, daisy.rooks@mso.umt.edu.